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Tuesday, 24 January 2017

Did the Temple go out of business due to competition?

Daf Yomi
Bava Basra 3

There’s an old story about Irving
who gets stranded on a desert island. Twenty
years later, they finally find him. His
beard’s a little longer, but for the most part, he appears to be doing just
fine. He proudly points to the house he’s
built for himself. It’s a gorgeous
structure with all the fancy trimmings. Next,
he shows them the two shuls he’s constructed on the island.

“TWO shuls?” they ask incredulously.
“Why do you need two shuls for one
person?”

“Oh, one’s the shul I daven in; the
other’s the shul I would never step foot in!”

Rav
Chisda said: People should never demolish a shul until they have built a new
shul. There are those who say that the
concern is negligence. And there are others
who say that the concern is prayer. What
is the practical difference? The
difference is whether there is an alternative place to pray.

Rashi
explains: Negligence means perhaps an unavoidable mishap will arise impeding
the rebuilding. Praying refers to their
ability to daven during the construction period.

Why
wouldn’t they be able to daven while the new shul is under construction? Surely, they could make a minyan – or two, or
three – in people’s homes! A lot of
people make minyanim in their living rooms – for some, it’s just a Friday night
thing; for others, it’s more permanent.
But it’s pretty clear from the Gemara here that house-minyanim don’t
quite make the cut.

There’s
nothing like davening in a shul. Our
Sages tell us that ideally one should strive to daven in the biggest
shul in town, because “the King is glorified with a mass of people.” It might be more convenient to make a
house-minyan on your block rather than schlep seven minutes to get to shul, but
the Almighty takes great pleasure when He sees us all davening together under
one great roof.

That was
the beauty of the Beis Hamikdash (Holy Temple). It was the one place on Earth that we could
come together as a nation and pray in unison.
Do you think it was easy for everyone to get along? Do you think there were no ‘shul politics’ in
the biggest shul in the world? Of course
there were issues.

Sadly,
that’s ultimately why the Temple was destroyed.
Our Sages tell us that the underlying cause was sinas chinam – unjustified
animosity. What is sinas chinam? It doesn’t mean that people disdain one
another for no reason at all – that would be very strange, and we’re talking
about regular, good Yiden! No, it means
a certain lack of tolerance and respect for others’ opinions and
approaches.

During the
time of the Second Temple, there were a lot of different factions in Jerusalem,
not unlike the world in which we find ourselves today; or for that matter,
throughout most of our history. For much
of the Temple period, somehow the Beis Hamikdash administrators managed
to keep it all together. But after a
while, people started making breakaway shuls.
At one point, our Sages tell us there were four hundred eighty shuls in
Jerusalem! (Eicha Rabba Intro)

Can you
imagine, the Beis Hamikdash was around the corner – the Holy Temple that
we’ve pined over for two thousand years – and people were making house-minyanim
because they couldn’t figure out how to tolerate the people who davened a few
feet away from them in the Temple courtyard?!
Maybe they wore a different yarmulke.
Maybe they held different political views. Maybe they were of a different social class. At the end of the day, they just weren’t people
they wanted to sit in shul with.

Any parent
will tell you that each one of their children is different. But what do they want more than
anything? That despite the differences
they all get along. And that’s what our
Father in Heaven wants. May you always
rise to the challenge of uniting with every one of your spiritual brothers and
sisters, even those who might have different opinions!